Tony Mancus

QUIET INSIDE US IS THE SPELL

woolly things make good form, a forumwhat you say for hearing, some built bedsand others badlands out of crushed velvet

others still a pier that jettisons your folding body,the tack of gum-soled shoes told feelingsbefore saturday morning began with great pain

one time i heard a gunshotand sawed my handwent missing

one time i built a sawout from a branchof trees, the sun crookedin all their teeth

my face forgot itself ina lake and so whatwinter, there’s no use

washing all the pillow cases,they’re holding other headstills now,proving no cloth keepsour privates holed in all the polaroidsburning on windowsills

across each state lined with flurriesof email, absence, tyrant-quit cigarettesand steamers full of broccoli

furniture is not an age of changean agent neither does one mistakefor what one makes whole

rainshowers collapse into waterstainstwo stories down

it takes a volume problemtakes a level, bubble sprungforce and the locus of handsin deep pressment to shot-clip this scene

one thousand first thoughtsand a lamp to rubswell with wishes,to rust out the machine

Tony Mancus is the author of a handful of chapbooks, most recently Again(st) Membering (Horse Less Press) and City Country (forthcoming from Seattle Review). He and Sommer Browning co-founded Flying Guillotine Press in 2008. They make small books. Currently he works as a technical writer and lives with his wife Shannon and their two yappy cats in Arlington, VA.